Through the Cracks
by Vain
Summary: One-sided ConYuu; Takes place during ep. 37 – At a moment when he feels his entire world is falling apart, Conrad looks through the cracks and doesn't like what he sees.


**_Through the Cracks  
_**By: Vain  
5.7.2005

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**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Kyou Kara Maou_ or any of the characters therein—they are the property of Tomo Takabayashi. This is a work of fandom; I am not profiting from this. The lyrics preceding and following the fic come from the song "_Right Where It Belongs_" and are the property of Nine Inch Nails and all the various and sundry individuals and corporations involved therein and can be found on the album "_With Teeth_."

**Summary:** Takes place during ep. 37 - At a moment when he feels his entire world is falling apart, Conrad looks through the cracks and doesn't like what he sees.

**Pairings:** One-sided ConYuu with a reluctant, wistful nod to WolfYuu.

**RATED:** PG-13

**_Warnings_**: **der angst** and some vaguely disturbing imagery / overtones. Beware of **S.P.O.I.L.E.R.S.** if you're not caught up to 37.

**Continuity:** This story takes place _during_ episode 37—it continues the opening scene with Conrad, picking up right where the scene cuts off after Conrad says "Yuuri . . ."

**Notes:** always love to my sexy beta, the **Apapazukamori**. Let this be a lesson to me to _never_ listen to NIN music while ruminating on Conrad's inherent angsty-ness. --

**Translations:**  
_Hahaue_ - Mother (honorific form reserved for people of high status)  
_Heika_ - Your Majesty; Emperor  
_Itai_ - "It hurts."  
_-kyo_ - an honorific form affixed to a name, meaning "Sir"

**Please review.  
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"_See the animal in it's cage that you built . . .  
Are you sure what side you're on?  
Better not look him too closely in the eye;  
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?  
See the safety of the life you have built—  
Everything where it belongs.  
Feel the hollowness inside of your heart;  
And it's all . . .  
Right where it belongs. _

What if everything around you  
Isn't quite as it seems?  
What if all the world you think you know  
Is an elaborate dream?  
And if you look at your reflection,  
Is it all you wanted to be?  
What if you could look right through the cracks,  
Would you find yourself;  
Find yourself afraid to see?"

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"_Y_uuri."

He sat in an elegant room, in an elegant bed, his elegant sheets pooled around him, squeezing his bandaged left arm with his right hand. It ached. It ached the way an arthritic limb ached on a rainy day, but this was not a pain induced by something as simple as a shift in air pressure. This was a reminder. And a warning.

He had a job to do and there was no room for regrets. His options—however limited they may have been—were still options and he had made his choice. Now all he had to do was live with it. It wasn't fair. Any other man would rant, and shriek and thrown things across the carefully clean room in a fit of pique. Instead, he swallowed the frustration and self-loathing and exhaled heavily. He had made his choice.

He may have sacrificed his honor in the process, but he would keep his pride at least. There would be no tantrums, no anger . . . nothing but his duty. How long had he kept himself going on just his duty? Food and sleep were secondary. He had no personal life to speak of. Just his duty. His duty and . . .

But, no. That was a pointless train of thought, wasn't it? That was . . . that was . . . a shameful thought. Vassals did not think of their kings in such a way. Nor did they think of their brother's fiancé in such a way. Suddenly nauseous, the young man gripped his left arm hard, negating one pain with another. A reminder. And a warning.

He squeezed his eyes shut and blocked out the meticulously clean room.

_Itai . . . Hahaue . . ._

It was strange. Even as a child, he had never cried for his mother, yet now, all he wanted was her overwhelming presence. Her gentle assurance that everything would be alright and that he was doing the right thing. He wanted her to gently touch his cheek. To smile at him. To speak to him softly and wrap her arms around him until he was lost in the scent of her perfume and her makeup and the overwhelming sense of _home_ that can only be found in a mother's arms.

He squeezed his arm harder. He wanted to tear it off.

He wanted . . .

_Yuuri._

What a selfish man he was . . . His father would be ashamed.

He hadn't been raised to be like this. He was descended from _kings_ . . . noble men . . . men who had given life and limb to the preservation of their people, the world, and the world the Original King had fought and suffered to create. Centuries of tradition and responsibilities rested on his shoulders. He was the product of generations of people who had sacrificed everything for peace.

He should have been happy. Wasn't he living up to his predecessors?

Perhaps. But it still felt too much like betrayal.

There had been a time when he had thought that he was the only one who could protect the boy—when he did not trust anyone to else be by his Maou's side. Not Gwendal. Not Günter. Not even Wolfram, who loved Yuuri . . . loved Yuuri more than _anything_.

No.

None of them could be trusted.

Protecting Yuuri was _his_ responsibility and his alone. His duty and his burden. His _right_. Julia had entrusted her soul to him and he took that duty very seriously. But now . . . now that he was gone . . . he could see the truth.

Yuuri had never needed him. _He_ had needed Yuuri.

And now that he no longer had a Yuuri to wait for, to wait _on_, to protect, and watch over, and serve . . . It didn't matter if he had his arm back. It didn't matter if he still had a duty. None of it mattered. Without Yuuri, none of it mattered. He felt as though he'd cut out half of himself—hollow, weary.

Alone.

He felt like a traitor.

"This is my duty! I swore to serve!"

The whisper sounded small in the large dark room, and guilt gnawed at him, twisting inside him and making his stomach churn. He squeezed his arm so hard, his fingernails dug into the tender new flesh beneath the bandage. He wanted to feel blood.

_And is _this_ how you serve? By drawing your sword against him? By making him sad? By attacking him? By spurning him and turning away, even though you_ knew_ it was killing him? Is **this** how you protect him—the one you claim to be your most precious person, Weller-kyo? The one to whom you have bound yourself in this life and in all others?_

His own duplicitous mind made him want to scream. He couldn't rationalize this . . . couldn't explain away this awful, terrible _awareness_ that he was doing something unforgivable. The knowledge that _he_ had been the cause of sorrow . . . that _he_ had hurt that precious person . . .

This arm was not his own. It was a foreign thing. An alien. An unwelcome invader in and on his body.

_Tear it off._

He wanted to go home. To Shin Makoku. To Yuuri.

_Tear it off. _

My duty . . .

Tear it off.

He doesn't love me.

The thought should not have been enough to stop him. It should not have been enough to quell his desire to be by his king's side in the slightest. It shouldn't have been, and yet it was.

It shouldn't have hurt.

And yet it did.

What right did he have to expect the affection of a man who was already promised to another? What right did he have to expect the affection of a _king_? And to make the matter worse, _his_ king—his master to whom he had sworn his life?

He had _no right_ to ask such a thing, and even less of a right to be frustrated when such affections were not forthcoming. It should have been enough to stand by his side in silence and look on from afar. It should have been enough to be near him, if not with him. There was no reason to resent Wolfram—to envy Günter's easy affections and the gentle, welcome hug always bestowed on Greta. Doing so was a treason worse than anything he was responsible for now.

_"This is my duty! I swore to serve!"_

The words were lies. There was truth in them, but they were still just something he told himself so that the guilt didn't eat him alive when he knelt before the lecherous eyes of King Belal and swore his sword to Dai Shimeron. They had had been the prerequisite ice in his heart . . . the kind that froze his eyes when faced with Yuuri's confused accusation. The kind that stiffened his spine and hardened his resolve when he drew his sword. The kind that stopped him from choking on the self-loathing boiling just beneath the surface of the ice and allowed him to delude himself, just one day longer. Just one day more . . . until he accomplished his mission.

But ice melts.

And Yuuri had been the glue that held him together. He did not know when it had begun . . . At first he had been content to simply wait for the king to come. Then, it was enough to serve him. But somehow, at some point in time, he had looked at Yuuri and seen neither a responsibility or the Maou, but instead pale skin, and large dark eyes, and an indomitable spirit with which he was all too familiar. And then what had once been a pleasurable duty had turned torturous. And Yuuri, although looking right at him, never saw him.

In all fairness, the Maou didn't see _anyone_ . . . not like that. Not through the eyes of a potential lover. But Wolfram—in all his unflagging determination—would one day ensure that Heika _did_ see that way . . . And when that day arrived, all he would see was his intended—his patient fiancé who had never left his side. His beautiful fiancé who did not have the stigma of being a half blood, and who came from a noble house that had not been cast down in disgrace, and who was more than just a soldier with nothing to his name beyond a bit of folded steel.

His fingers went slack, numb, and the pain in his arm began to fade.

Yuuri would see Wolfram. He knew that. But just because Yuuri did not see him, did not mean that he wasn't _there_.

Only now, he wasn't there, was he?

No.

He had gone away. He was now a renegade. A traitor. A deserter.

A fool.

It was his duty.

It was his excuse.

He had left and some dark, selfish part had hoped that maybe . . . just maybe . . . it would hurt Yuuri . . . just a little. And wanting to hurt someone he loved so much made him a bastard, but he had wanted it anyway. And maybe he wanted just a little time away to collect his thought. Maybe he wanted to _not_ love that person. Maybe—if he left behind those dark eyes and that easy laugh—he could regain his breath and put himself back together.

But instead he was falling apart—fine cracks radiating out from the core of him that made his ache every time he remembered the pained look in Yuuri's eyes. How could he have wanted to hurt him, knowing that such an act would cause _THAT_ look in his Maou's eyes?

. . . But no.

Yuuri wasn't _his_ Maou any longer, was he?

. . . And that meant that he didn't belong to Yuuri anymore either.

"But I do!" The sound of his own voice in the darkness startled him and he jumped. His lips parted, as though to cry out, but no sound emerged, and his body twisted for a moment beneath the thick cotton sheets. Uncomfortable and cold in the northern night, he dropped back down into the feather mattress and stared at the dark canopy.

_Yuuri. Yuuri. Yuuri. Yuuri . . ._

"I belong to you . . ." He wanted to state it as a fact, but it emerged as a plea and something desperate clawed at him at the sound

The silence did not respond.

He understood now. No matter how far he went, he would never catch his breath and he would never be free of the duty he had taken upon himself or the love that he could neither reject nor act upon. Never. He belonged at his master's side.

But he had denied his master. By his own admission, Yuuri was now his master no longer.

And so he breaking and all the lies he'd wrapped around himself were falling away, exposing the reality. And what he saw horrified him. How could one avert one's eyes from oneself? It was impossible.

But the depth of his sin—his betrayal—blinded him and left him feeling bewildered.

_Duty._

Drowning in the darkness, he clung to the word like a life preserver.

_Duty._

It would be enough. It would have to be enough.

After all . . . even serving him like this . . . even hurting him like this . . . Wasn't that helping in its own way? This was a task charged to him by the Original King. The Original King wouldn't steer him in the wrong direction . . . would he?

And—even if the Original King had—did it really matter?

When all was said and done, all he had was his oath. He was nothing truly special: a half blood; a dethroned heir without a title or a scrap of land to his name; a traitor; a servant; a heretic who fell in love with his lord; a bastard who envied his half-brother; a monstrous kind of man who killed easily and was fool enough to fall in love with a young man he'd known since before birth.

He was not special. He knew this. He was simply Conrad Weller and the only things he had ever had were his blade and his duty. _That will be enough. That will have to be enough._

He repeated the thought several times, his lips moving soundless as he tried to find a comfortable position. The effort was wholly futile, though, and he knew it. He would never be comfortable—never be whole—until he was back at his king's side. The knowledge was cruel and offered only the promise of more pain, but it was all he had as he stared blindly into the darkness, searching for sleep that would not come.

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"_What if all the world's inside of your heart,  
Just creations of your own—  
Your devils and your gods, all the living and the dead—  
And you really are alone?  
You can live in this illusion. You can choose to believe.  
You keep looking but you can't find the words;  
Are you hiding in the dreams? _

What if everything around you  
Isn't quite as it seems?  
What if all the world you think you know  
Is an elaborate dream?  
And if you look at your reflection,  
Is that all you want to be?  
What if you could look right through the cracks,  
Would you find yourself;  
Find yourself afraid to see?"

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Fin

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End file.
